
Douglas V. Johnson II |
Review of
Peter
Hart, The Somme: The Darkest Hour on the Western
Front. New York: Pegasus Books, 2008. Pp. 589. ISBN
978-1-60598-016-4. |
Peter Hart, as a Director at the Imperial War Museum, is
well-positioned to write a book about this "battle," among the most
infamous in the First World War. He has drawn judiciously on
voluminous original materials, including an extensive collection of
survivor interviews, to produce a nicely textured, updated analysis
of the entire campaign. While most of the text deals with the trials
of the soldiers and units at the tactical level, these are tied
rather well to the higher direction of the campaign, with concise
summations of the strategic necessities the commanders operated
under.
As
in Martin Middlebrook's First Day on the Somme, 1 July 1916,[1]
the model for the present book, Hart begins with stage-setting and
follows each separate event or episode based on participants'
testimony. Mercifully, the substantial selections are always apt.[2]
The opening day of the operation takes 210 pages. The steady
repetition of the same tale--moving up, waiting in awe for the
bombardment to finish, forming up and walking across no-man's-land
until machine-gunned or killed by artillery fire--loses its initial
impact after a while. If Hart intended that effect, he succeeded.
The pattern continues throughout the book, but the following days
and months do indeed change in particulars, offering welcome relief
and expanding our understanding of the reasoning of the leaders and
the limitations they faced.
Hart
carefully details site selection and preparation for the
battle--campaign, really--and its supporting infrastructure. The
latter comprised the stocking of ammunition, building firing
positions in an essentially open plain, digging wells to water the
principal motive power of horses, metaling farm roads built to
handle nothing larger than wagons, and extensive mining activities.
Hart's major contribution, however, is the extension of the
narrative and testimony beyond the first day. In particular, he
demonstrates the learning that took place within the British Army
and the adaptation of tactics to the palpable realities facing the
soldiers. For example, the Battle of Morval, beginning 25 September,
was designed to be "a real 'bite and hold' affair, with objectives
limited to the new German front-line system and a total advance of
just 1,200-1,500 yards" (412). The advance would remain well within
range of the British field artillery, which would not need to be
displaced forward, wasting precious time setting up for a renewed
advance. Further, most importantly, counter-battery practices had
been refined and augmented to have significantly greater effect
since the opening phase in July. Tank operations, Hart notes, were
"more sensibly integrated into the attack plan," and had "at a
stroke ... been placed in their proper context ... [as] a potentially
useful adjunct to the deadly combination of infantry and artillery"
(412).
The
lesson is "well known," even if not true, that in this war in
particular, artillery conquered, infantry occupied. Hart makes this
point repeatedly, attending to the complimentary issues of density
and quality. Haig, he points out several times, often extended the
attack frontages unnecessarily, diluting the effectiveness of the
guns. Hart stresses right from his opening pages that the early days
of the war established the need for greater numbers of guns of
various types and capabilities, with a shift away from
shrapnel-firing field guns to heavier calibers with ammunition and
fusing designed blow up trenches rather than merely showering the
troops with sprays of shrapnel. He notes that, as the campaign
progressed, British artillery targeting improved. But neither
artillery nor mining of whatever extent could be the whole solution.
When the British used 60,000 pounds of ammonal to obliterate the
Schwaben Höhe Redoubt and many of the deep dugouts nearby, nothing
outside the blast was fatally affected and when the Tyneside
Scottish traversed the 800 yards between their jump-off line and the
gaping hole in the ground, they were killed in droves by machine-gun
fire from flanking positions.
Hart
also discusses the struggle for air superiority, noting that the
Somme battle began in the air well before a shot was fired on the
ground. Both sides had come to understand the importance of aerial
reconnaissance, which, of course, necessitated control of the air.
At this period, the British had an edge in technology with the
introduction of the DH2 and the FE2b fighter planes, despite claims
for the superiority of the German Fokkers. Advocates of airpower
notwithstanding, only a few bombing attacks were very
effective--Hart notes one in which a bomb hit an ammunition dump,
destroying most of a German unit in the immediate vicinity (203).
That
the dangers of the fog of war affected attackers more than defenders
is major theme in the book. The inability to communicate effectively
gave rise over time to the practice--even official policy--of
commanders at certain levels not leaving their command posts in
order to be able to report regularly, even though destruction of
forward communications made such reports unreliable. Here also, the
air arm was not yet a constructive force. All sorts of measures were
attempted, but until reconnaissance aircraft could carry aloft a
reliable transmitting mechanism, reports would always be late, and
even then, the ability to distinguish friend from foe on the ground
required considerable training and experience. As the soldiers
learned, the enemy's aircraft could be a nuisance, but their
observation balloons were a most reliable warning of forthcoming
artillery fire.
Another interesting thematic thread in Hart's account is the speed
with which most men adapted to the slaughter all around them. As
Second Lieutenant Montague Cleeve put it, "But we had not to
mind--eventually one just got over it, thought nothing of it. Dead
bodies all over the place, we couldn't help it--we were alive and
that's what mattered" (215). Men seem to have become psychological
casualties more from the effects of massive bombardments than the
sight of the dead and wounded. The question of how this may inform our
study of post traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) is complicated by the
way the British Army classified and handled such casualties over the
course of the war, an issue beyond the scope of this work, but
clearly hinted at in the soldier testimonies.
Hart
demonstrates how the British learned from their experiences as the
battle wore on for days and weeks. For example, the 8th
Devons had suffered badly on 1 July; two weeks later they stole into
no-man's-land at night and positioned themselves close to the German
lines. This allowed them to escape the defensive barrage that fell
(relatively) harmlessly behind them. In addition, supporting British
artillery had been ordered to employ only high explosive,
delay-fused ammunition. This was done to prevent the effects of
friendly fire--premature detonation in the remaining trees or errant
shrapnel rounds (267).
In
early November, Haig urged Gough to launch yet another attack. He
noted that the situation in Romania had become acute and the
Russians were wondering what the British were accomplishing,
since very little movement was observable. This larger overlay is
often ignored as critics curse Haig. That the Romanian problem was
settled by von Mackensen in short order took that issue off the
table, but Russian suspicion played out in another way as Roosevelt
pushed Operation TORCH partly in response to similar pressure. War
is a political act.
Grim
as all of this was, Hart's "Assessment" is well worth reading, even
if it, too, has to be gruesome. The British suffered some 419,654
casualties, 131,000 dead by his accounting. The French suffered some
204,253 casualties although their records are notoriously bad, and
of course the Germans suffered as well--losing between 450,000 and
600,000.
Hart
often challenges conventional wisdom; though he may not always be
fully convincing, he offers especially cogent alternative arguments
in the strategic realm. He is particularly sharp in his criticism of
the "Easterners." "Defeat at Gallipoli probably did greater damage
to the standing of the British Empire than any imaginary victory
could ever have achieved" (531). The evaluation of Haig and his
staff is as balanced as one is likely to find: Hart asks why they
were so slow to learn what in retrospect seem obvious lessons, yet
gives weight to the role of inherited strategic demands.
Hart
says his "main interest is in the insights into the human condition
granted by studying the conduct of men of all ranks under conditions
of incredible stress, fear and suffering" (13). In this he succeeds,
but he does a good bit more. He certainly extends the work of
Middlebrooke previously mentioned and provides some novel and
interesting analyses. Some will wrongly see "excuses" in his
interpretations; in fact he has put his finger nicely upon the
realities of "learning while doing" under strategically ambivalent
conditions and direction. It takes time to see and comprehend the
"lessons" of warfare and longer still to provide remedies. Hart's
pragmatic analyses make his book an excellent addition to the World
War I scholar's library; it is also worth reading for professional
soldiers--if only for the "how not to" lessons. Though
non-specialists may find it heavy going, it does have the excellent
quality of returning periodically to the larger strategic context so
often absent in mere "battle" narratives. It will likely be the new
standard for the bottom-up narrative of the campaign, but, more
importantly, it will challenge and inform the next strategic
interpretation of the Battle of the Somme.
[3]
U.S. Army War College
douglas.johnson@us.army.mil
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